As opening day approaches, LI’s Boston fans come clean

They are the few, the proud, the outed … they are Long Island’s Boston Red Sox fans.

“I’m relatively new to the area, but I’m already traumatized,” said Camp, a partner at Melville’s Holtz Rubenstein Reminick.

Camp lived in New England from 1979 until last year when she moved to Long Island to work for the accounting firm. It was while living in Westborough, Mass., that she became one of the Fenway faithful.
“I’m not used to the abuse,” she said.

While Camp grew up deep in the heart of Red Sox nation, Law fell in love with the Red Sox from his family living room in St. James.

“My father was a National League fan and we were watching the 1967 World Series together,” said Law, the Long Island Power Authority’s chief executive. “He was rooting for the Cardinals and I picked the other team.”

The Red Sox were the other club and though the Sox lost the World Series in seven games, Law was hooked. He fell in love with Southampton native Carl Yastrzemski, the star on those Boston teams.

“By 1975 I was really into them and they were an incredible team,” Law said, recalling the year that Fred Lynn, Jim Rice and Dwight Evens patrolled the outfield wearing bright red hats.

The 1975 team would also reach the World Series before losing in the seventh and deciding game to the Cincinnati Reds.

Eleven years later, the long-suffering Sox would lose again, this time to the New York Mets. Law was at Shea Stadium when Jesse Orosco struck out Marty Barrett to give the Mets their last title, in 1986.

And he has a secret: “I was OK with it. I also like the Mets. It was a great series and a great ending.”
No it wasn’t, said Paul Majkowski of Rivkin Radler.

Majkowski called the day the ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs a personal nightmare. But when he was asked to expand on the 1986 debacle, his venom quickly turned to the team that didn’t beat the Red Sox in that World Series.

“I have nothing against the Mets or their fans, they don’t think the world revolves around them,” Majkowski said. “The Yankees, yeah, it’s all about them right?”

Jumping on the anti-Yankee bandwagon, outgoing Deputy Suffolk County Executive James Morgo called the Yankees “communists.”

“I was baptized under the holy trinity of Roman Catholic, Democrat and the Red Sox,” Morgo said. “All three have disappointed me. But I remain loyal to all three.”

The support has finally paid off – at least with Boston – which won two of the last five World Series, winning it all in 2004 and 2007.

“I had a three-by-five Red Sox flag after the 2004 World Series and it was confiscated by management at the last firm I worked at,” Majkowski said. “It was later shredded.”

Good, said Ed Dumas, vice president of communications for LIPA.

“They are a sinister, mean-spirited segment of the population with hatred in their hearts. They revel in a dark fandom, the kind that can only evolve over decades of frustration and disappointment,” Dumas said. “I shun them as a general rule, and I believe all the rest of civilized society should do the same.”